


Fight the Future

by ninemoons42



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-12
Updated: 2011-06-12
Packaged: 2017-10-20 09:02:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/211047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42





	Fight the Future

  
title: Fight the Future  
author: [](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**ninemoons42**](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/)  
word count: 1122  
fandom: X-Men: First Class [movieverse]  
pairing: hinted-at Charles Xavier/Erik Lehnsherr  
rating: PG  
notes: _Definitely_ an AU for the beach scene in the movie, so, spoilers. This is what happens when they turn back the clock.

  
_Make it stop._

Erik Lehnsherr. Orphan, survivor, experiment, mutant. Magneto. His arm is still up, palm out, and his mind is screaming with the effort. White missiles slowly turning around. Fear and hate burning on his lips.

 _Make me stop._

The beat of his heart a frantic slamming rhythm against his ribs. People shouting nearby, like distant babbling. The memory of the bloody coin, falling to the floor of the submarine’s nuclear reactor room like a door closing.

 _Please, stop!_

And now there’s a thought that’s not his, or that’s coming from some other part of him. He could lift the helmet off on his own, he could take it off and open himself to the others, he could scream for help – but who would help him? A man so obviously meant to lose everything he loved, over and over again?

“Erik!”

Someone is screaming his name.

He tears his eyes away from the deadly sky for a moment.

And that’s when Charles’s hand closes around his wrist. A hard grip, completely unexpected, hard enough to almost grind the bones together. Pain, sparking up his arm. Distraction – if he loses control, where will the missiles go? Will they strike his targets? Fall into the sea, useless?

“Erik! Stop!”

The words he’d been waiting for.

The world stops. Erik stops. Something is splashing far away.

He only has eyes for the man next to him, who is calling his name. “Will you let me take off the helmet?”

“Charles,” is all he can say, and he tries to put in so many more meanings: _Yes, please. Help me. Stop me. Save me._

A tiny smile.

Erik bows his head.

A pull, a burst of sound and the world crashing down.

Faint flicker of metal on his vision, and Erik reaches out blindly: Moira MacTaggert, a service pistol. Soft rain of bullets and parts onto the white sand. A gasp, and remorse, and she turns away.

“Erik.”

That voice, calling him, compelling him. Charles. Here he is, and Erik feels a weight lift off his shoulders, a weight he hadn’t known he was carrying. A thousand destinies and futures averted. Years of regret and pain and enmity and need. Gone, all gone, and this is a different world turning on a different axis. Charles, here, whole and calling for him. He looks up, into those blue eyes.

“We’re not safe here, we have to go,” Charles is saying. “Back home, back somewhere safe.”

“Is there such a place?” Erik asks.

“We’ll find one,” Charles says.

And then it is a mere matter of reasserting his authority, the authority Charles has always shared out to him without a second thought. “Azazel, everyone,” he calls, and they all join hands in a circle. “Yes, you too, Moira,” he says, though he watches her avert her eyes and he knows why. He understands, now.

Charles is sending out images of a house, almost a small _schloss_ , and miles of garden and secluded forest. A distant place across the ocean. The world vanishes in sulfur, and Erik catches Charles’s eyes just before they go, and they smile, and he feels he’s doing it right this time.

///

It takes a long time, and at least one quietly futile attempt at dinner, but eventually the day ends, and Charles sees the children – and he has so many of them now, with Angel’s return and the addition of Riptide and Azazel – into bed. The rooms have been well-maintained though he and Raven have not stayed here for some years. Tomorrow he will have to either secure the loyalty of the staff or dismiss them. A gentle command, a _push_ , will have to suffice for now.

Moira volunteers to stand watch in the night. There is a horror in her eyes that terrifies him in turn, fear and the refrain of _What have I done/what have I almost done?_ And he is secretly glad when she dismisses him and he flees to his old rooms.

Erik is still standing near the fireplace when he returns. The weight on his shoulders, the dull sheen of the helmet discarded at his feet.

The decanter and the glasses are on the table next to the bed, and he pours generously and walks over to the other man, offers silently, smiling.

Erik sighs. His hands come up to Charles’s around the proffered glass. He looks terrible, aged suddenly. Tired and frightened. Much like Charles himself.

“It’s all right,” he says, and he’s saying it for both of them, he’s trying to be convincing, though all the world knows of them now, and the cares of tomorrow are already eating in around the corners of his mind. Little voices of fear and madness.

Erik is still holding his hand as he brings the glass up to his mouth and drains it in one swallow. The muscles of his throat working, the flash of his eyes.

“I’m here,” Charles says, simply, and he drinks his scotch. When his hand shakes as he puts the glass down, he only sighs.

“You intend to build again,” Erik says after a moment.

“I have to. I must begin again in the morning. I have some resources that I can access, things I’ve put away for such a need as this. Though I had never imagined my need would be so great.” Pause. “And you?”

Erik sighs and lets his hand go. Charles feels bereft, suddenly. “I will stay, and do what I must. If you will have me, of course.”

“Never a question, Erik,” Charles says, and now is the right moment, and he steps up to Erik and catches that craggy face in his hands, pulls him down, brushes a thumb over his mouth and then a kiss over his forehead. “Even were we the greatest of rivals, you will never not be welcome, and I will always be here for you. No matter what happens.”

He releases Erik reluctantly; he takes his right hand – the hand that had held the missiles motionless – and tugs him to bed. Sleep, he needs sleep; there will be so much that will need doing.

“Charles.”

“Erik,” he says, gently. “We have plans to make, we have children to look after. Yes, I know all that – but please can we sleep first? I shall be incoherent in a moment and I believe you passed that point five minutes ago.”

“So I have,” Erik says, and Charles waves him to the bed, lets him select a side to sleep on, and then he creeps under the covers and he’s asleep almost as soon as his head hits the pillow.

They’ll have time, he thinks. He feels an arm slide around him, a lean warmth.  



End file.
